Now click here if you’d like to see how the rest of the Christians around the world live.

An Episcopal priest who practices Zen Buddhist meditation was not approved to lead the Diocese of Northern Michigan. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said on Monday that the Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester did not receive the required consents from bishops and standing committees to be consecrated. His election was thus “null and void.”

“I have been extraordinarily blessed and honored to walk with my friends from the Diocese of Northern Michigan over these past months as their bishop-elect,” Thew Forrester said in a statement, according to the Episcopal News Service. Thew Forrester was elected in February to succeed James Kelsey, who died in June 2007, as bishop of the Diocese of Northern Michigan.

He was the lone candidate presented by the search committee. But his ties with Buddhism and views on core Christian doctrines raised concerns among many in The Episcopal Church. His revisions to the denomination’s Book of Common Prayer were also questioned…

One would hope that faulty views on core Christian doctrines would still be enough to raise concerns within any church group.

I was walking past a big video display at a National Religious Broadcasters convention in Indianapolis just as the Sunday “worship” services were being announced. It was announced that “entertainment” during worship would be provided by Cece Winans. I wondered if even one other person walking by saw the idea of worship and entertainment as incompatible. The authors of this press release saw no contradiction in terms as they promote their “Gospel Entertainment” company.

Years ago, Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death described a culture where no tyrannical leader would have to ban books. Books would no longer be a threat because the entertainment obsessed culture would remove anyone’s desire to ever pick up a book. We are there now, and not just in secular culture, but among evangelicals who long ago abandoned any taste for the deep things of God. As my earlier post pointed to the crude, puerile foolishness of the Saddleback improv comedy group, who would want to study the Scriptures and delve into doctrine when potty jokes are so much more fun?

“But folks just weren’t coming to church as much anymore. Too many sporting events on Sundays and too little faith. I looked out at the half-empty sanctuary one Sunday and thought, Lord, what can I do to get people as excited as I am about coming to church?”
–Pastor Rachel Bickford, Pilgrim Congregational Church

P.S. Note that the link is to a secular website. When the Bible instructs us to be a “peculiar” people, I don’t think this is what was meant. It’s one thing to be ridiculed for Christ and His cause. It’s another to get laughed at because you’re wearing a dog collar and trying to look like a metal head so you can have street cred as a Christian. The laugher, sadly, is warranted.

I have seen first hand just how meaningful those kinds of memberships can be. As a young adult, I attended a Southern Baptist church. Every Sunday an “invitation” was given as a matter of ritual. A few would straggle down the aisle each service for one reason or another. One Sunday, a heavily tattooed man headed down to the front. Everyone was excited because he was a visitor and surely, his trip down that aisle meant a new convert. The man signed the membership card and the very next Sunday, was put right into “service” at the church. The only problem was, nobody really knew him before they handed over the keys to the Sunday School bus. An hour later, the police pulled the reportedly new convert over along with the bottle of Jack Daniels under his seat. The bus had been weaving all over the road. Tragically, nobody ever saw the man again. Welcome to the numbers game, where warm bodies, signing membership cards, walking aisles and instant baptism with no discipleship are the norm.

Johnny Hunt needs to repent for his numbers idolatry and realize that the real reason the churches are declining is spiritual in nature. Real converts produce real churches, no matter the size, where Christ is honored, and lives are transformed by the preaching of the Word. The article reports that Hunt is calling for the “relaxing” of rigid worship standards to draw more people. Based on what I’ve seen in SBC churches, a lot of them have no worship standards to begin with, so I’m not sure how much farther down he intends to go in that regard. Pleasing goats has never been the purpose of worship. Worshiping God and pleasing Him alone is our duty as believers.

Church by the Glades made Slice headlines in the past by featuring a 9,000 pound Indian elephant named Judy one Easter Sunday, handing out Hannah Montana tickets, and giving away iPhones and Nintendo Wii’s.

HT: A Little Leaven

Compare this pathetic effort with the spirit of this Church of England missionary hymn from 1866.

Lord, her watch thy Church is keeping:
when shall earth thy rule obey?
When shall end the night of weeping?
When shall break the promised day?
See the whitening harvest languish,
waiting still the laborers’ toil;
was it vain, thy Son’s deep anguish?
shall the strong retain the spoil?

Tidings, sent to every creature,
millions yet have never heard:
can they hear without a preacher?
Lord almighty, give the word!
Give the word! in every nation
let the Gospel trumpet sound,
witnessing a world’s salvation,
to the earth’s remotest bound.

Then the end: thy Church completed,
all thy chosen gathered in,
with their King in glory seated,
Satan bound, and banished sin;
gone for ever parting, weeping,
hunger, sorrow, death, and pain;
Lo! her watch thy Church is keeping;
Come, Lord Jesus, come to reign!

–Henry Downton, 1866

Sermons with graphic sexual themes and church-wide sex challenges are merely symptoms of a much bigger problem. In short, the church is fornicating with the world and intoxicated with the spirit of the age. Some of neo-evangelicalism’s favorite jargon—missional, contextualization, authenticity—has been tortured and misappropriated in order to justify and institutionalize gross worldliness.

This worldiness and sensuality comes with a price tag, even for the pastors. Pastor Gary Lamb of Revolution Church did a series called “Creative Sex” using secular rock songs like, “Your Body is a Wonderland by John Mayer and “Feel Like Makin’ Love” by Bad Company. Tragically, Gary Lamb resigned from the pastorate of Revolution Church yesterday after having an affair with his personal assistant. The spirit behind these R-rated churches is one of disobedience, rebellion and ultimately, destruction.